So, first things first. I don't see myself as being able to go back to a weekly update any time soon, if ever. There's just too much going on right now. A lot of that is simply because it's summer, the time for vacations and visiting relatives.

However, part of it is also because I've been turning my attention more and more to my original fiction. I'm working on my second novel at the moment and that is time consuming.

That being said, I have no intention of abandoning this project, I'm determined to finish it. It's just that you're more likely to see updates on a fortnightly basis rather than a weekly one from now on.

I hope you're all having a wonderful summer and able to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather. (Or having a cosy winter, if that's the case. *g*)

~ Chapter 12 ~

And Then There Were Three

"I could try calling your aunt," Talbot was saying as I came down the stairs.

"No thank you, Mrs. Talbot," Chloe answered.

"But I don't want you to miss out on going to the pool," Mrs. Talbot said, concern clear in her expression. "Perhaps your father…"

But Chloe shook her head. "Honestly, it's okay."

"What's wrong?" Simon asked, having come down the stairs behind me.

"No one thought to pack Chloe's swimsuit for her when she came here," Mrs. Talbot explained.

"I really don't mind staying here," Chloe insisted.

"Do you want me to stay too?" Simon asked. "Keep you company?"

Chloe gave him a grateful smile but again shook her head. "In all honestly, I would kind of like to have some time just to myself."

It was a sentiment I could hardly blame her for. I was looking forward to the peace myself. I'd keep to my original plans and retreat to my room as soon as my session was over, just in case she wanted to hang out in the media room or something. In all honesty being alone with her wasn't something that appealed at the moment, especially after my argument with Simon.

I passed by the little group without a glance, heading to Gill's office.

I'd been even more focused on my sessions over the last couple of days and she'd seemed pleased with my progress. Of course, she didn't know the full story about my "bothering" Chloe and as I sat down for my session, I again considered telling her everything. I wanted to get her take on where my therapy had gone wrong and what we could do to get me back on track. Maybe when Simon was gone, I'd tell her. I couldn't afford to be transferred now, not when my plan was going so well. Once Simon was safely away, though... Then I couldn't help but feel coming clean with her would probably be a good idea. Yeah, it would get me transfered for sure and I hated the idea of having to start over again with a new therapist. Still, I clearly needed more help than I was getting here. Or rather, I needed to be more carefully monitored.

We started off by going over my session with Davidoff, followed by what he'd said regarding my mood charts.

Once we were finished, she folder her hands on her desk and focused her most piercing gaze on me.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

I wasn't surprised that she'd picked up on the fact that I was upset. Most people wouldn't have but Gill was a trained observer and what was more, she'd come to know me fairly well over the last few months.

"I fought with Simon before they left," I told her.

"The same fight as always?"

"Yeah." I sighed, rubbing my hands over my face. Just being in a situation where I could talk openly about our argument was a relief. "He was getting ready to go and harping on how it wasn't fair that the others got to go and I didn't."

"And?"

I quickly went through the basics of what had been said and Gill listened without comment. She didn't take any notes this time but then she didn't really have to. The argument was more or less the same one we always had when the others were taken somewhere.

"Derek," she said, when I'd finished. "Tell me honestly, do you feel about not being allowed to go. Not what you understand in your head but how it makes you feel when they leave and you're still here? How you felt this afternoon when they walked out that door."

I stared out the window behind her, the branches of the tree beyond the lacy curtains nearly bare this late in the season. It wasn't easy to find the right words for the mix of emotions I'd felt. As always, Gill waited patiently for me to find them.

"Relieved mostly," I said finally. "The biggest problem here for me is the fact that I almost never get any time to myself. I feel, crowded. The chance to have some peace and quiet…" I shrugged. "The fact is that I'd much rather stay here alone then go swimming this afternoon. When the others are out there's no pressure to socialize or whatever. I can just be alone without anyone giving me crap about it."

Gill smiled slightly. "I know that for an introvert such as yourself being expected to socialize as much as the staff here advocates can be difficult. I don't want you isolating yourself completely, you understand. However, I'll talk to the nurses and see if we can't make arrangements to allow you to retreat to your room during the day sometimes."

"That would be really great," I told her honestly. "I know I have to be around people, that isolating myself isn't healthy. Still, being around people 24/7 to a bit much, you know?"

"Understood," Gill said. "You said, you were mostly relieved. What else?"

"Guilty," I admitted. "I was so glad to see Simon go after we fought but…"

"You felt that it was wrong for you feel that way," Gill finished for me when I left the thought unfinished.

"I guess," I admitted, shrugging. "I know it makes sense for me to want some time away from him after a fight but… he's still my brother, you know? I shouldn't want him to leave but I did."

"Of course," Gill said, scribbling a note in my file. "Anything else?"

I thought about it and shook my head. "Not really. Just relieved and guilty about being relieved."

Gill gave one of her quick smiles. "Okay, then. To move on to a related subject, have you thought about what we talked about before, about why Simon refuses to accept your diagnosis?"

"Yeah," I admitted unhappily. I'd known we'd eventually come back to this subject at some point. In all honestly, it was something I'd been dreading. "I still don't know," I told her, not bothering to hide that I was frustrated. "I mean, I know what Simon thinks, that Dad would just dismiss this whole thing and say that there was nothing wrong with me."

"You don't want to believe your foster father wouldn't have got you help," she said kindly.

I shut my eyes. I'd been thinking over this again and again. She was entirely right. I wanted to believe Dad would have realized I needed help. But…

"He didn't blame me for what happened that day," I said finally. I couldn't explain why he thought it was just an accident, a moment of carelessness. A normal human couldn't have done what I'd done without serious effort and maybe not even then. As always when something skirted too close to what I couldn't talk about, I choose my words carefully.

"The guy had a knife," I said finally. "That's the thing that it came back to for him, I think. He was upset, don't get me wrong. Really upset. But… he said I was just protecting my brother. That it was all down to fear and adrenaline."

"So, that you weren't actively to blame," Gill clarified.

"Not actively," I agreed. "But he disappeared the next day." I leaned slightly forward, focused on that one fact. "Like I said, there was no opportunity for him to even begin to deal with what happened…"

"Derek," Gill interrupted. "You know as well as I do that twenty-four hours is long enough for him to give some indication of how he viewed the incident. He made it clear that because of the knife you were, if not justified, at least not entirely at fault for the results. Is that not, right?"

"Yes." I leaned back again, looking away.

"So, he didn't view your response to the situation as the problem," she pressed.

"It's not that he didn't think it was a problem," I objected. "There was a kid in hospital, he knew it was a problem."

"But?" Gill pressed, not allowing me any room to sidestep the issue. "Tell me honestly, do you think that Simon may be right, that your foster father would not have seen your need for psychiatric help?"

She waited as I fought my internal battle.

Christopher Bae had saved me in every possible way. He'd given me a home and a family when no one else wanted me, treated me like a human being when to everyone else I was little better than an animal. He'd given me unconditional love and never once treated me as anything less than his son. I looked up to him as I looked up to no one else. I'd always trusted him, from the first time he took my hand and led me out into the world beyond the lab. He'd never once let me down. Never. I couldn't believe he would have let me down in this, I couldn't. Except…

When I finally spoke it was little more than a whisper. "Yes, I think Simon's right." It seemed to tear something inside to say the words. To admit that truth. "I don't think Dad would have seen me as sick."

The room was silent for a moment as I stared at the floor, fighting a sudden urge to cry.

"Derek," Gill said finally, her voice soft and kind. "I know how hard this is for you to admit. But do you understand why it's important for you to accept that? Both for understanding how Simon feels but also for yourself?"

I didn't look up, feeling beaten down. "I get the first bit but not the second," I answered.

"In all our time working together you've talked a great deal about your foster father. There is no doubt that he is a good man who loves you and has clearly done his best by you. But, Derek, he is only a man. You've put him up on this pedestal of perfection and that's not fair to either of you. What's more, we have to face the reality that there would have been warning signs that something was wrong long before that day on the playground. Signs he didn't see or chose to ignore. Mental illnesses like yours don't crop up overnight. This would have been in your from the beginning, possibly since you were a small child."

I stayed silent because I couldn't think of anything to say. Was it really possible that there had been warning signs before that day? Warning signs that Dad either hadn't seen or didn't understand? I hated the thought. It seemed disloyal to even consider it.

"We've talked about some of them," Gill went on. "Your social isolation, your inability to form any bonds outside your immediate family. The disregard you felt for your schoolmates. These are all red flags that something isn't right. And there were likely other signs. I'm not saying he didn't do his best by you, but the fact is that you've needed help for a long time."

I shut my eyes tightly, trying to think of some way to refute what she was saying, to argue that Dad had worried about these things. He'd known they were a problem. Still, the fact was that he'd never once mentioned even the possibility of getting someone for me to talk to. And while that would have been difficult considering what I was and the way we moved around all the time, I knew it wasn't impossible.

Gill allowed me to sit in silence for a few minutes before she went on, voice back to her usual cool professionalism. "We'll revisit this subject later," she said. "For now, though, I think it's best that we move on. Her tone helped to bring me back out of my thoughts and I was immensely grateful for that. I wasn't ready to deal with this farther and Gill knew me well enough to know it.

"So," she continued, as I finally forced myself to look up at her. "Let's talk about how you handled your tempter during your argument with Simon this afternoon."

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

After my session I had planned to retreat to my room. I'd been completely honest with Gill. I was definitely feeling over peopled and after our session I needed the time to myself to regroup more than usual. The memory of my fight with Simon ached as did the thoughts about Dad that Gill had running around in my head. All I wanted was some time alone; to clear my head so I could start planning what to do next about getting Simon out of here. That was all that mattered right now. The rest could wait. And frankly, I wasn't anywhere near ready to consider the possibilities Gill had raised. Not yet. So, it was with a real relief that I pushed it all aside for now.

Things were progressing fairly well but I wanted to get Simon out of here as soon as possible. Luckily, I didn't think it was going to take too much more to convince Simon that Chloe needed the kind of help that only someone like Dad could get her. There would be a little trouble over the fact that I was even more determined than ever to stay. Still, when weighed against what could happen to Chloe if he didn't go, Simon would hopefully admit that I could take care of myself for a little while, long enough for him to find Dad anyway.

I ran into Talbot in the hall on my way to the boy's side stairs.

"It's unusual to have more than one of you here when the others go out," she said, in that attempting to be kind but clearly nervous way she always spoke on the rare occasions when we were alone together. I hated it and feeling as raw as I did, it grated more than usual. Talbot was afraid of me, always had been. She wanted to be friendly, probably even wanted to like me. She was that kind of person. Somehow that made her fear all the more of a slap in the face. It probably didn't help that I was nearly a whole head taller than her. "The girls seem content to stay in their rooms for now," she continued. "But the others will be gone for a while. I know we don't usually allow you to watch movies during the day but if the three of you decide later that you'd like to watch one that would be alright."

Wait... three?

"I thought just Chloe and I stayed behind."

"Oh no," Talbot said. "Tori is here as well."

The phone started ringing in the office at that point and as Gill had stepped out as soon as my session with her was over that just left Talbot to answer it. She hurried off into the office, leaving me to absorb her news.

Queen Victoria was usually the first in line to get out of Lyle House for any reason or no reason at all. So why would she stay? She hated it here. The only reason I could think of for her not to go was that Chloe hadn't gone. Tori's intense dislike for Chloe hadn't diminished, if anything it had increased if the death glares she sent Chloe's way were anything to go by.

Making sure Talbot was immersed in her phone call, I headed up the girl's stairs to check on Chloe.

Scent told me which room was Chloe and Rachelle's and determining which side was whose was obvious on sight. Rachelle's side was a mess, wall covered in pictures, dresser covered in tubes of lip gloss and other girly things, most of which I couldn't identify. Chloe's side, on the other hand, was fairly neat with few personal effects besides a very old and warn stuffed Koala. Likely a childhood holdover.

Chloe's bed was made but slightly rumpled as if she had lain down on top the covers sometime after making it that morning. Her iPod lay abandoned on those covers and she herself was nowhere to be seen.

Moving silently farther down the hall I peered around the partially open door of the room Tori now had to herself. She lay on her bed, eyes closed and earbuds in her ears. I could just hear a wisp of music from them. She'd taken a shower at some point since the others had left and she'd laid a towel over her pillow to keep it from getting wet.

Heading back downstairs it took very little time to determine that Chloe wasn't on the first floor either. Talbot was still in the office and I could hear occasional the turning of pages now. When the others were out she often took advantage of the quiet to read.

One glance out the back window was enough to assure me that Chloe wasn't there, even if I couldn't tell that the alarm on the back door was still engaged. Besides, Talbot had thought that she was in her room and you couldn't get out into the yard unless one of the nurses let you out. Unless you were me, of course. I seriously doubted that Chloe had the technical knowledge to bypass the alarm system.

Standing in the downstairs hallway I looked round reflexively, even though I knew no one was there, before I knelt down for a good sniff. I hated using my enhanced sense of smell like this, like I was some kind of dog. It wasn't easy to pick out clear trails in a house where the same few people lived day in and day out. Following Chloe was particularly hard as only that day she had been on all three floors already. However, when I found a recent scent of Tori's heading into the basement...

Tori never went down there unless more or less ordered by the nurses to help with the laundry, something that hadn't happened in several days.

The basement was empty when I got down there. I could smell Tori as well as Simon, Chloe and myself from earlier. Tori's scent, however, headed directly to that damn closet.

From behind it came a muffled scream.